About Our Topics

Whether you are new to the site or a food policy wonk, we aim to inform you with the latest news on all of the important issues facing our food system. We have developed topic pages where you can find information and news on a variety of issues all in one place. Below is a list of our featured topics.

Antibiotics

Antibiotic resistance is rapidly becoming a major health crisis in the United States, as a result of overuse of antibiotics in both human medicine and livestock production. However, according to analysis of U.S. Food & Drug Administration data by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 80 percent of all antibiotics sold in the U.S. are used on animals. Farmers regularly administer low-dosages of antibiotics to accelerate growth or to prevent animals from getting sick due to unsanitary and crowded living conditions in factory farms. However because antibiotics are so widely present on the farm, eventually most of the bugs that are vulnerable to the antibiotics are killed off, and only a very small handful of superbugs, ones that happen to be immune to the antibiotics, remain. The superbugs then flourish and spread. The problem of antibiotics resistance cannot be overcome without addressing the huge quantities of antibiotics used on livestock. The superbugs that are immune to antibiotics on the farm exchange genetic material with bacteria everywhere, leading to antibiotic resistance in hospitals and communities. Public health and environmental groups have sued FDA for its failure to act on antibiotics and the FDA has asked drug companies to voluntarily limit the use of certain antibiotics in animal feed, but many advocates feel that the voluntary standards don’t go far enough and want FDA to institute binding, mandatory, limits on the use of antibiotics that preserves the use of antibiotics for sick animals. In the meantime, consumer advocacy around meat, including public outcry to “pink slime,” has created a drumbeat around meat without drugs.

Recent Articles About Antibiotics

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What do football fields and industrial farms have in common? In both places, a microscopic threat to human health is spreading. But on farms, a lack of veterinary involvement may be making the problem worse. Read more

Foster Farms has been in the news lately because the company was linked to a Salmonella outbreak that sickened hundreds of people last year. Last week a plant was closed after USDA found cockroaches and sanitation problems. They’ve been quick to make promises about doing better, but so far we haven’t heard any explicit pledges to prevent the further spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Read more

In 1977, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) let everyone know that there was strong evidence that the use of penicillin and tetracycline for anything other than treating disease in livestock, could lead to the development of super bugs strong enough to render the powerful antibiotics useless in people. That warning sparked a ferocious backlash from the powerful animal agriculture industry, which to this day still depends on feeding animals low doses of antibiotics to help grow them faster and compensate for crowded unsanitary living conditions. Read more

So, FDA has finally come out with its much talked-up voluntary guidance (read, recommendations) for the pharmaceutical and livestock industries on appropriate antibiotic use and avoiding antibiotic resistance. It has been pending in draft form for over a year and a half and has been long-criticized as a hollow gesture to tackle antibiotic resistance. Despite FDA’s assurances, the reality is that this final guidance: 1) doesn’t do much, 2) pretends to do more, and 3) kicks the can significantly down the road. Here’s why: Read more

One of my favorite things about Thanksgiving is all the sides. I’m already looking forward to sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, and more. But one thing Americans aren’t looking forward to this Thanksgiving is getting their turkey with a side of antibiotic resistant bacteria. Unfortunately, practices in the conventional poultry industry are putting consumers at risk. Read more

Antibiotics are becoming dangerously impotent, resulting in two million infections and 23,000 deaths each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). But what happens when we lose these drugs altogether? Reporter Maryn McKenna explores the dramatic implications of that question for the Food & Environment Reporting Network (FERN) in its first collaboration with Medium.com in a piece out today called “Imagining the Post-antibiotics Future.” Read more

Whole Foods Market (WFM) is again at the forefront of the movement for greater transparency in food production and processing. The supermarket chain recently announced a comprehensive ratings system for fresh produce and flowers, which parallels the color-coded animal welfare standards for meat and the sustainability standards for seafood that Whole Foods earlier pioneered. Read more

On April 29, 2008, the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production (PCIFAP) released the findings of a two-and-a half-year examination of the food animal industry to the nation. Their conclusion: The current system of raising animals posed unacceptable risks to public health and the environment. Five years later, an in-depth analysis by the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future (CLF) determined that instead of getting better, the problem has actually gotten worse since the commission released its seminal report, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm Animal Production in America. Read more

Today, together with Causes.Com, I’m launching a new petition to take on what government officials and medical experts are increasingly calling a growing threat to public health: The overuse of antibiotics on animal farms. The petition is expected to reach as many as a half million Internet viewers this week. Petition signers are asking Walmart’s CEO, Mike Duke, to demand that its meat suppliers only use medically necessary antibiotics when an animal is sick, rather than to prevent sickness because animals are crammed in conditions that breed infection. Read more

For decades, livestock producers have used low doses of antibiotics to expedite animal growth. The practice, dubbed sub-therapeutic antibiotic therapy (STAT), lowers feed costs while increasing meat production, and nearly 80 percent of the antibiotics used in the United States are for this purpose. Because STAT can encourage the growth of antibiotic-resistant “superbugs,” it’s banned in many countries, but remains common in the U.S.-despite recent public pleas to stop it by two former FDA commissioners. Although STAT has been in use since the 1950s, how it works has long been a mystery. But evidence is mounting that it might be due to antibiotics killing microorganisms that populate animals’ guts. Read more